


Battlemaster

by Amethyst_Moon



Series: it's a long way to walk [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Mass Effect
Genre: Bonding over lost civilizations, Friendship, Gen, Protheans knew of wizards, though they called them Magi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-20 01:08:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8230984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amethyst_Moon/pseuds/Amethyst_Moon
Summary: On board the cultural melting pot of the Normandy, Harry and Javik meet.





	

_ Oh Garrus, ye of little faith. _

 

Stomping feet alerted him to approaching hosts.

 

“Commander Shepard, I presume?” The woman was charismatic, indeed - eyes couldn’t help but to be drawn to her. He placed his right hand over his heart and bowed, just slightly, at the waist. “Harry Potter, at your service. Garrus spoke highly of you.”

 

The turian behind her surged forward to clasp their forearms together, then pull him into his chest. A subtle keening vibrated from his subvocals. “Spirits, Harry, how did you escape? Sidonis...”

 

“Is no longer a problem.”

 

His voice was dark with promise, and Shepard - witness and executor of the worst the galaxy could give - felt a shiver go down her spine. This man, Harry, had hair of the darkest night and eyes of the brightest jade, and stood with the confidence of knowing he was the most dangerous thing in the room despite having no visible weapons. She believed it. He wore not any armor she’d ever seen, but what seemed like an authentic leather dress, and boots of the same material. All in all, if not for his posture, she would think him only a bizarre collector of ancient objects with a penchant for travelling.

 

“You know Garrus?” She asked.

 

Said turian didn’t seem to be letting go anytime soon, and had in fact wrapped his other arm around Harry’s back. “I was his combat medic,” Harry explained over his shoulder. “Anyone went down, I got them out and kept them alive long enough to get to a proper healer.”

 

“I trust him with my life, Commander,” Garrus said, “Spirits know he’s dragged us back from death more times than I can count.” He let go of the smaller man then, though anyone with eyes could see that it wasn’t willingly.

 

“Well! I trust Garrus, so if he trusts you, you’re welcome to board the  _ Normandy _ .”

 

Harry nodded. “My thanks, Commander.”

 

The original  _ Normandy _ was the brainchild of human-turian engineering, and it showed. The  _ SR-2  _ had more human influences, courtesy of  Cerberus. But the crew, at least, were still passably loyal to Shepard, if a bit more xenophobic than before. Insults, cold shoulders, it was almost like home with its prejudices against muggles and creatures all over again. It was positively nostalgic, this world 200 years removed from his own.

 

It was only a matter of time before Shepard brought him along on a ground mission. She had reports of increased geth activity in the area, and wanted to wet Harry’s feet on a recon mission before dropping him in the deep end. Of course, as all her missions did, the situation went FUBAR before long. They got pinned down in a firefight, and a simple infiltration turned into a nightmare.

 

“Potter, hopper on your seven!”

 

“My  _ what?” _

 

He didn’t even know basic positioning? Shepard had the sudden, inexplicable urge to punch something. Preferably his head.

 

But regardless of his understanding (or lack thereof), Potter whirled around and emptied a clip into it. His gun was an archaic thing, one of the earlier models that barely used eezo. Shepard lost sight of him again, for the nth time, as he dove into new cover.

 

Quite suddenly, Harry became aware of another geth - cloaked - moving behind Javik’s unprotected back. He threw out a hand to discourage it, but the bloody thing just didn’t quit! The prothean rose to do his biotic thing, unaware of the danger behind him. Harry cursed under his breath. Though grumbling, he took a running leap into his teammate, slamming them both into the floor and conveniently avoiding the hail of bullets above.

 

Javik pushed the primitive off him and fired a three second burst to disintegrate the mech. As he scrambled up, he caught a glimpse of a mark at the nape of the primitive’s neck: a triangle, containing a circle struck through by a line; beneath it, words in a looping script. His hands paused for barely a moment before he rejoined the neverending fight.

 

Harry grunted as he, too, peeled himself from the floor. For his part, he was just about  _ done _ with this planet. It was humid, it was tedious, the natives wanted to kill them, and so did the immigrants.

 

The geth sneaking up on him was the last straw. Mechs never knew to avoid him like even the stupidest organics did. Death itself was his servant, and these tin cans thought he would die here?

 

Harry took a deep breath. “Commander, I can disable the robots, but our own electronics might also go offline.

 

“If you can get us out of here, Potter,” Shepard grunted as enemy fire clipped her cover, “do it.”

 

“Understood.” And without a second thought, he threw himself to a vantage point that had a line of sight to every geth in the room - but also had the unfortunate result of drawing the attention of every single one. Ignoring the shot that slammed into his shoulder, Harry dug into his reserves for a wide range blasting curse.

 

Humanity really had moved forward a lot since the Mars Archive. Space flight, weaponry, even the tiniest details of life were suddenly amazingly, cripplingly, dependent on mass effect. This goldmine of potential created by merely passing a current through eezo crystals to change mass. And, well, magic tended to fuck up electronics - especially the delicate ones like guns. By way of explosions.

 

Harry discretely palmed his wand, waved his arm, and, one by one, every geth hit by what seemed to be orange flames either ruptured violently or dropped like puppets with strings cut. At the same time, Harry fell to one knee.

 

“I’m fine,” he panted, waving Javik away when he approached.

 

Javik ignored him and pulled Harry up by the arm, deigning to wrap an arm around the human’s waist when he sagged. “I had not thought any of your kind yet lived, Magi.”

 

“‘M not Magi. Wizard.”

 

A primitive word for a primitive people.

 

They stumbled to the extraction point on Shepard’s heels. As they rushed towards the  _ Normandy _ and caught their breaths, Harry peeled away his battlerobes to reveal a bruise already blooming on his left shoulder. He carefully numbed his left limb from the shoulder down, then cast a localised  _ petrificus _ to keep it still. Javik twitched beside him.

 

“I am impressed, Magi,” he said, “In my cycle, you were barely able to grasp your gift and still crawled in the mud with your brethren.”

 

Harry looked up then. “We had magic that early?”

 

The prothean exhaled shortly. “We deemed you to have potential.”

 

“Potential?”

 

He was saved from answering when the shuttle docked in  _ Normandy’s _ bays, where Harry was quickly whisked away by Garrus to the medbay. The Magi’s complaints that he was  _ fine, thank you, who’s the medic here anyway? _ lingered in the hold. Javik returned to his quarters with a noise of disgust. He didn’t know how he could have expected the Magi to be anything other than so weak as to be unable to lead.

 

**\---**

 

Harry padded down to the hold on soft feet, exploring by night as he did in school. Only a skeleton crew kept the ship running. 

 

Garrus might have been inclined to keep him within sights, but he knew Harry got twitchy - as in trigger-twitchy - when people tried to order him around.


End file.
